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DEVELOPING NEW BUSINESS IDEAS106

not work, often leading them to accomplish things which they had
thought impossible. Within 18 months, Prince had volleyed its way to a
50 per cent share of the tennis ball machine market.

Head was a great exponent of the ‘Why?’
technique

Involvement in the tennis-playing world led Head to perceive the
analogy between the world of skiing and that of tennis. Both markets
were overflowing with amateurs who would do almost anything to
improve their ability, gravitating without fail towards products which
worked better. That their ability required improvement is evidenced by a
1974 Sports Illustrated article, which noted that 21 million Americans,
drawn like fruit flies to a vast ripening vine, were now playing tennis at
one level of incompetence or another. As the article pointed out: ‘Unlike
golf, tennis has no par to alert man to his inferiority. He can reach new
depths without the need of a 19th-hole elixir to ease the pain.’82

Head saw it differently: ‘I saw the pattern again that had worked at
Head Ski . . . I had proven to myself before that you can take different
technology and know-how and apply it to a solution in a new area.’83 In
other words, his right-brain insight spotted the analogy, highlighting a
different but similar opportunity to empower sporting amateurs to
perform like champions by transforming their sporting equipment.

‘I saw the pattern again that had worked at
Head Ski’

In accordance with whole-brain thinking theory, he then had to set
about the highly rational and convergent task of learning the physics of
tennis rackets, surfaces and string tensions before he could
successfully develop the oversized Prince tennis racket. To understand
the intricacies of stringing rackets, for example, Head and his
manufacturing director immersed themselves in the market by buying
every single stringing machine available in order to understand how
each individual machine worked.

After a period of persistent trial and error, and having overturned
conventional industry thinking on the ‘correct’ size and shape of a tennis